A grim accounting

A week after 12 people were murdered at the Washington Navy Yard by Aaron Alexis, attention begins to turn to the side effects of the tragic spasm of violence. The Post’s Peter Hermann makes note of what the killings will do to the District’s yearly homicide count, which had been on a five-year downward trend that is now highly unlikely to continue. With Alexis’s 12 victims counted, D.C. murders are now up 28 percent year-to-date. Peter surveys police officials in such notorious jurisdictions as Aurora, Blacksburg and Newtown and discovers that there is no one “best practice” for accounting for acts of lunacy in statistics meant to track street crime: “In big cities and small towns alike, leaders often cite murder rates as a measure of safety in communities. But mass attacks don’t comfortably fit into categories designed for killings during holdups, drug deals or domestic fights.”

In other news:

Standardized test scoring decision kept 2013 math scores much higher than they would have been otherwise (Post)

In the realm of ethical lapses, Marion Barry “is in a category of his own” (Post column)

Prosecutors won’t say what Keely Thompson did with $50,000 he stole (Loose Lips)

Council forces DDOT to back off changes to visitor parking passes (DofD, WTOP)

Move to hand two closed DCPS schools to charters “is an important step by the District government in helping charters solve what’s been a chronic shortage of appropriate classroom space” (Post editorial)

Barbara Lang: “When I got here, we were a non-player. Nobody came to us for anything. … And now we are considered the major player.” (Capital Business)